The Good Sport
by Ananke
Summary: In future years, a child of Voyagers confronts the legacy of her forebearers. 7, C/7, J/C


Disclaimer: Paramount owns ST: VOY and all related characters. No copyright  
infringement intended.  
Summary: The next generation reflects. Lots of angst.  
  
---  
Try to be a good sport, Seven. The game's over.  
-Janeway  
---  
  
Queen of Hearts, swift beheadings.  
  
Explanations. You probably want to know who I am, plastering my face on your  
home viewscreen, waking  
your early morning slumber. Oh, I'm aware of your habits. By the time you wake  
up enough to realize this  
isn't a dream, I'll be quite finished, ma'am. Then you can mull over my  
identity and my words, with him.  
If either of you still have the humanity to give a damn.  
  
Doubtful.  
  
But back to the issue. Seven has become accustomed to her incompletion...admits  
that she has never felt  
as secure or as satisfied with her existence as she felt during those years as  
a drone. And why should  
she? The Borg were family, no emotional ties, no inherent tendencies to betray  
and no souls to shatter  
with the betrayal. You, voyager, taught her the colder facets of living, and  
she never escaped them  
afterward.  
  
I see her through jaded eyes myself, you need not fear a rant of blind defense  
here. Seven of Nine is  
selfish, and willful, and thoroughly insensitive. She's also young at heart,  
and vulnerable, and ancient in  
soul. And so very confused.   
  
I suppose I inherited some of it, or I wouldn't be breaking open old scabs to  
confront you with this.  
  
I want to walk you through Seven's life, ma'am. Bitter step by bitter step.  
  
Picture yourself, six years old, hiding underneath a flimsy console, watching  
your entire existence explode  
into hell. Easy to see, isn't it? Easy to tsk about and move on. You've  
witnessed the slaughter of  
innocents before. You've even instigated it. It's really very bland to you.  
  
So move back a few weeks, a few months. Witness the arguments, the image of a  
small girl with golden  
hair and a crooked smile hiding under a kitchen table, in a closet. Listen to  
her parents. Father wants  
adventure. Mother wants safety. Annika simply wants peace. No such luck.  
Picture the same time, same  
place, another golden-hair, this one older, mechanically driven, in a tight  
suit of the finest red and with  
metal for jewels. Picture this Annika, the one you thought you knew so well.  
She went back in time. Did  
you know that? Did she report it? Seven went back in time, and attempted to  
convince her parents not to  
take that fateful flight. She pleaded with them, verging on hysteria. Mother  
almost believed her, did want  
to stay. Father said no, Father brushed her off. She left in dejection and with  
the weight of three lives in  
her heart, but not before befriending herself.   
  
Can you begin to comprehend the pain I saw in her eyes, sensed in her voice, as  
she told me of herself, of  
the child who trusted her implicitly but in the end met the fate her father  
decreed with his foolish audacity  
and childish spirit?  
  
No, you won't comprehend it. But I did, and rested my head on her lap like a  
child, and felt the spasms in  
her fingers as she stroked my dark hair. She apologized, over and over, for my  
childhood, for my  
difficulties, for my anger, for my existence. "I should have spared you." She  
said, firmly and painfully.  
"But how could I have, when I could not spare myself?"  
  
Move along.  
  
A drone, cut off from her hive, was left adrift on a ship of inferiors with  
delusions of superiority, and no fear of  
acting on those delusions. Picture her alone, terribly alone, hearing only  
her own thoughts after  
processing the thoughts of trillions, condensing them, making them one. Picture  
her considered an  
outcast, antisocial, unfriendly. How could she be expected to understand the concepts of  
sociality and friendship when she  
was offered both only with a dagger? She did not understand, simply moved through existence on a tide of  
confusion. She retreated into  
herself, and shied away from asking the help and attention desperately  
craved. Seven of Nine condensed her  
thoughts, until they didn't matter, and could not hurt. Nor could the insults and  
distance. Eventually, she  
become adept at survival, and pretension. She was such a good sport, smiling, nodding,  
pretending grudging  
amusement. Seven of Nine allowed the others the privilege of never knowing how much she  
hurt, and how they caused  
the hurt, hid behind her garish, cracked clowns mask, and screamed inside,  
when Annika wasn't softly  
weeping.  
  
She learned that to love was to hurt, and recognized the same realization in the  
eyes of a few others, the ones  
who knew almost as much of hell as she. It was easy to call those few friend,  
Tom Paris, Samantha  
Wildman, Neelix. She deeply empathized with them, but there remained a veil of fog  
between. There came along  
another, who ripped apart the veil, who attracted the former drone not with his bids for  
attention, his unbending  
perseverance, or his bright mask. He went to her with no pretenses, no  
promises, nothing but a smile  
and sad brown eyes.   
  
Seven and Chakotay. Scandal behind that pairing, and pain. They survived  
the return home, and took  
a cabin on the lake, in a remote area of Earth. That was her dream...no alien  
landscapes, no more star  
travel, just the rich warmth of the human homeworld and the promise of a happy  
future. Just as the child  
Annika and her mother had always wanted. All they had ever wanted, not the stars, not fame. Just a small enough slice of happiness.  
  
Picture her a bride, draped in old lace and soft silks, hair loose  
and bud-strewn, feet  
dancing to tunes you had never thought her capable of tolerating, much  
less enjoying. Picture a  
strong native arm around the slim waist, warm laughter in her ear, the drunkenness  
of pure, unhampered  
joy on her face.   
  
No, don't look beyond the wedding dance, ma'am...you wouldn't want to see. We  
have the vids, still, and  
it's very odd how well electronic impulses can capture the soul. You were a  
proper guest, all smiles and  
champagne, patting hands and commanding toasts, but there was a coldness, a  
lunging hunger in your  
gaze that few besides Seven or myself would fully recognize. That was the last  
time you would see Seven  
of Nine for years. You simply ignored her existence.  
  
And she moved on. Try on her shoes again.   
  
The third home in as many years, a modest little shack with no modern amenities  
like replicators and  
sonic showers. This time, Annika wasn't wearing the kid slippers of a blushing  
bride. She happened to be  
barefoot, makeup smudged, eyes threatening to overflow with tears,  
and frustration. This was the  
third time his reunion meeting with Admiral Janeway had turned into an  
overnight coffee and roast at  
Kathryn's gleaming apartment. She was hardly jealous, yet, but tired, and  
ill, and with the little jagged edges such as a messy  
house and a bawling two year old at her knee.   
  
She recognized that she was not complete.  
  
I was the bawling two year old. The next day, Chakotay came home to find his  
bride on the kitchen floor,  
with slashed wrists. She survived, but the child who was hiding under the  
kitchen table and refused to let her father touch her will never forget  
the pain, or the realization that she was not valuable enough to make Mother  
want to stay alive.  
  
Ill, now?  
  
Have your companion get you a cloth. He probably hasn't spoken yet, for he  
believes when in a pit, words  
only put you deeper. He's scratching for resistance, in a most reserved way. He  
was silent that day as  
well, and even after Seven recovered from her self-inflicted injuries it was  
never discussed. His silent  
blame got the point across well enough.  
  
One more shoe fitting. A year later, Seven and child returned early from a  
vacation with the Paris family.  
Seven was calm, unplagued by nightmares or fears, almost fully happy. She walked  
into her home prepared  
for a new start, a brighter future. She walked into tangled sheets and sex, and  
so did her daughter.  
  
At times I believe the image still haunts her, one of those stark,  
unforgettable moments amongst a  
thousand.   
  
She strode out onto the porch, and sat on the rough planking, rocking the small  
child calmly, eyes cold and  
pained. Husband and Father didn't make excuses, didn't offer apologies.   
  
He left with his bed partner, moved his things out days later, didn't fight  
custody requests or plead  
another chance. He just walked away, and ended up where he is right now, in  
your home, in your bed.   
  
Back to the shoes.  
  
There were no confrontations, but there really needn't have been. Her expression  
had to say it all, she  
could bite back words, but Seven's eyes were her soul, and utterly without  
restraint. At times I hate her  
for the weakness of giving in, giving you...her captain...the satisfaction.  
  
Her captain.  
  
Only way Kathryn Janeway has ever been addressed in the household of Annika  
Hansen. The words are a  
sort of honorable litany put together, a grotesque prayer to a demigod. I don't  
understand the reverence.  
You took everything from us, and had no part in the rebuilding.   
  
Yet my mother still labels you 'my captain'.  
  
Love.  
  
Fuck, what do you know of it?  
  
You don't remember the night the way I do, I suppose. Moonlight and roses, a  
neck rub, gentle  
teasing...my father was very good with gentle teasing. Those are your memories.  
You've conveniently  
blocked the fact that the roses were picked from my mother's little garden and  
that the sheets you  
crushed them on during your lovemaking were her marriage sheets.   
  
I wonder what he remembers? I've thought of asking, to be sure, I've received  
his dutiful requests for  
communication, my mother has never told me to not contact him. I've thought  
about it, just to ask what  
he remembers of the night. Does he recall seeing his wife and little girl  
framed in the bedroom doorway,  
watching his adultery? Does he recall the naked shock and pain on her face? I  
do.   
  
I thought of asking her as well, how she lives her solitary life so calmly, how  
she accepts your arrogance  
and inferiority without outward emotion. I did, asked her how she could  
tolerate being so incomplete, so  
utterly abandoned and cast upon jagged rocks.  
  
"Katrine." My mother turned to me then, the dying sunlight framing her face in  
amber, the still blond hair  
falling loosely against the absurdly innocent face. "You must understand. She  
was my captain. She could  
not always be my friend."  
  
FIN 


End file.
